Just curious, guys. What do you expect to achieve with this believer? I’m certainly not opining that you ought to stop, just curious whether you expect or hope for any particular type of outcome.
Well I started with the ill-conceived idea that I might find out how certain believers accept both predestination and God’s system of justice. I was certainly under no illusion that anyone would have an ‘epiphany’ due to illogical systems of morality. Sum total of my edification so far is that getting a believer to respond to a question without complete obfuscation is like nailing jelly to a ceiling, only using a banana as a hammer and the ceiling doesn’t exist.
Most of these thread aren’t about the OP. People come in to witness like this all the time, and they’re not interested in or ready for debate. They just want to speak their beliefs as if they were fact and bask in the praise. We do argue against them in the hope that they’re actually interested in debate and are not just close-minded zealots, but mostly it’s for the people watching: the people on the fence who might be swayed by something like this, people who don’t know how to argue against this kind of thing and might need help, etc. Simply ignoring it, which is what I would prefer to do, can be seen as agreement.
Believer?
I’d be pleased to continue this discussion with you, as an atheist!
My diversion over the last few dozen posts had to deal with the dubious credentials posturing that goes on when atheists attack Christians.
I have no dog in the God is Great fight. What interests me is the dichtomy----the blindness to the faith displayed by atheists in these threads.
I veered off course because I wanted them to give me the scope of the knowledge they gained by reading the bible cover to cover. And they didn’t disappoint. (I had the advantage of prior experience and knew what to expect)
From my POV, if you have knowledge about the bible (not gained from a google search 2 1/2 minutes ago) than use it; show it. If OTOH you read it cover to cover (:dubious:) as part of a college class 10 years ago and can’t remember any of it, than keep your keyboard mouth shut about the experience, because someone might just call you on it.
We’ll talk later. I did not spend anytime with your posts, but I will revisit them and we will see what the bible says about them.
The fact, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to others, and I was hardly avoiding you.
But, here we are. I’d like you to consider refining and clarifying your questions as they are not clear or concise. (although that may improve after I reread your posts in this thread)
At first blush—from this post---- I find no compelling biblical case for predestination. But we’ll focus later, so as to not jump around.
Firstly I am not an atheist, which you might realise if you’d spent time reading what I had written, rather than pursuing your own agenda, without much reference to the OP. I have never claimed to be a biblical scholar, or read it in its entirety. I do expect you to either respond to a section of fairly unequivocal text given in the bible, either with an explanation, which I hope for, or failing that concede that the point is beyond your grasp. The fact that people are now able to research scripture with the use of Google, has no bearing in the worth of their argument, it just makes things easier. Your refusal to speak on the referenced text on this basis is nonsensical. It is not a matter of recalling text from memory, it is a case of understanding the text at hand. Your failure to do so, simply marks your lack of a coherent counter-argument.
This is from a person who cannot argue right now because his bible is at home. :dubious:
I’m not qualified to argue here, though – I’ve read up to Leviticus and couldn’t get through the list of rules. Then, I tried the NT, but I only got through one or two Gospels. When Jesus stated flatly that you should never pray in public and you should only pray by citing the Lord’s Prayer – that seemed to completely fly in the face of any form of Christianity that I’m familiar with, my brain shut down and I put the book away.
Captain_Awesome, you might want to start a new thread to tackle the issues you are addressing. This thread is being swamped by the effluent of the pissing contest that has dominated the last couple of pages and I am closing it.
[ /Moderating ]